The following information was submitted by several UN agencies reviewed in the report to provide additional context and data.
How United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Scored on Our Report Card
What UNHCR Is Doing to Support Women and Girls in Crisis
The 2018 UNHCR Age, Gender and Diversity Policy underscores UNHCR’s longstanding commitment to ensuring that people are at the center of all that UNHCR does. This requires the agency to apply an age, gender and diversity (AGD) approach to all aspects of the work. This policy consolidates and updates existing commitments to a strong AGD orientation, Accountability to Affected People (AAP) and commitments to women and girls throughout all programs in humanitarian settings.
A key component of UNHCR’s AGD Policy is the recognition that “forced displacement and statelessness impact people differently depending on age, gender and diversity. Understanding and analyzing the impact of intersecting personal characteristics on people’s experience of forced displacement or statelessness are necessary for an effective response.” The UNHCR Age, Gender and Diversity Accountability report reviews data on the implementation of the AGD policy for the period 2018–2019 and includes a summary of findings for each of the policy’s core actions. The findings highlight important lessons learned and priority areas for follow-up as well as operational examples of relevance to UNHCR’s AGD approach. Similarly, the 2019 UNHCR Global Strategic Priorities Progress report includes information on key indicators related to women’s participation and gender-based violence interventions. In addition to the above-mentioned reports, UNHCR has also developed tools and guidance to support country operations in implementing the AGD policy commitments. This for example includes the UNHCR Gender Equality Toolkit (2020) and the UNHCR Operational Guidance on Accountability to Affected People (2020).
Localization with a particular focus on women-led organizations is a priority for UNHCR. UNHCR is currently working with a partner organization on a baseline analysis on UNHCR’s engagement with women-led groups, and further localization work is planned for 2021. Furthermore, UNHCR’s new Results-Based Management (RBM) Framework will introduce a new approach to planning, budgeting, monitoring and reporting. The framework is expected to address gaps in sex- and age-disaggregated data collection and enable better financial tracking with regards to crosscutting priorities, including on gender equality and women’s empowerment. “Empowering communities and achieving gender equality” is one of four impact areas and “community engagement and women’s empowerment” is one of 16 outcome areas in the new RBM framework introduced in all UNHCR operations in January 2021.